In the Headlights

Distillation

A few days ago, on NPR I heard an interview with the editors of the book Not Quite What I Was Planning, Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser. They are editors of online magazine Smith.  They'd asked readers to write the story of their lives in six words.  The results are riveting.  Famous and not-so famous responded, hundreds a day. 

A famous example would be "I came, I saw, I conquered."  Three words if you insist on the Latin "veni, vidi, vici", but works  in English.

They started with an example from Hemingway who was asked to tell a whole story in six words: "For sale.  Baby shoes.  Never worn."

Some of my favorites:

"I still make coffee for two."

"After Harvard, had baby with crackhead."

"Brush with death, comb with life."

"Sold the saxaphone, bought a computer."

On Blog of the Nation, they asked listeners to submit their own:

"Previous high achiever succumbs to mediocrity."

"Had a life.  Became a wife."

"Is it time to retire yet?"

I tried to do my own, but couldn't think of anything I liked enough.  How about you?

I'm Late

I'm late!
I'm late!
For a very important date!
No time to say "hello", goodbye!
I'm late!
I'm late!
I'm late!

I run and then I hop, hop, hop!
I wish that I could fly
There's danger if I dare to stop
And here's the reason why

You see, I'm overdue, I'm in a rabbit stew,
Can't even stop to say "goodbye"
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.

I'm off to see the Queen of Hearts
Who lives up in the palace,
And the very moment I'm through with her,
I've got a date with Alice.
I can't be late for Alice.

Or the Queen of Hearts who lives up in the palace.

You see, I'm overdue,
I'm in a rabbit stew,
Can't even stop to say "goodbye"
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!

I'm running late, and when I am, this song frequently pops into my head.  Those who know me might surmise that this song is therefore on a constant feed loop through my head.  You might be right.  Which could explain a lot.

I also frequently feel as if I've gone down the rabbit hole with Alice, but that's another issue entirely.

The White Rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland sings this song as he looks at his pocket watch.  My brothers and I heard it a lot growing up.  My Dad had made a few reel-to-reel tapes of songs for us, and they were pretty much always playing.  This song, sung by the late Danny Kaye was on one of them.  It's from the Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland."

[Image from Lenny's Alice in Wonderland site]

By the way, did you know that Lewis Carroll's real name was the Reverend Charles Dodgson?

Dear Diary

I write this blog on the premise that every day, I can find something that amuses me and that I find worth sharing.  Without a doubt, some days that something is better than others. 

I just ran across something I clipped from our newspaper a ocuple of months ago.  It's about someone who wrote a lot, about nothing interesting.  At least I think so.  His name was Robert Shields, and when he died recently, he left behind a diary of 37.5 million words, found in 91 cardboard boxes.  To produce this volume, he sat in his office in his underwear, and wrote about his life every five minutes for twenty-five years. 

It seems to me that the temporal burden of writing every five minutes would leave no time to experience anything to write about.  The former minister from Dayton Washington wrote every time h took a crap or ate a meal.  He also spent quite a bit of time being interviewed by the media. 

Here's a link to an interview by Michael Feldman  from a 2000 show.(Michael Feldman's Whad'ya Know,  incidentally, be coming to Jacksonville in a week).  Shields says he writes about four hours a day.

There are days when writing one post a day seems like a burden.  I wonder if he ever thought of throwing in the towel.

[Image via boingbboing]

Name Your Poison?

When L.C. asked me if I knew what a Vesper was, I said "Sure, one of those 2-cylinder European cycles that gets 100 miles to a gallon."  She assured me that she didn't have an accent, and wasn't talking about Vespa, but Vesper.

I knew it was a canonical hour, that's about it.  Actually, Vesper refers to the evening, particularly the evening star, Venus.  It also is a bell rung in the evening, an evening service, the sixth canonical hour or its service, held in the evening, or a part of the Roman Catholic office to be said in the evening.

But that's not what she meant either.  She meant Vesper the drink.  Well, I thought I knew my drinks pretty well, but this had me stumped.  It seems a vesper is a drink James Bond had a bartender make him in Casino Royale, described here in Esquire (the whole article's pretty good):

3 ounces London dry gin
1 ounce vodka
1/2 ounce blonde Lillet

Lillet, apparently is a French aperitif wine which is mixed with two strong clear spirits (gag me), and then shaken or stirred, depending if you are pro- or anti- Bond, and then strained into a champagne flute and garnished with a lemon twist.  Sounds pretty girly to me.

L.C. and Stryder had been in Vegas and met a young woman at a bar who was drinking vespers.  And apparently was sober enough to describe what went into them.

[Image from Bond Lifestyle.  Looks like a martini glass to me.  He specifically asked for a champagne flute.  I think he'd send it back, don't you?] 

The Professor and the Madman

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester is the most recent book I finished.  In fact, I finished it in bed this morning, drinking coffee.  Bliss. 

I enjoy reading Victoriana, and this true story of Victorian genius and insanity, murder and madness is a joy to read.

I'd give a ***spoiler warning*** now, except you'll know what I am about to say before you've finished the first two pages.

Broadly, it is the story of the conception through completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, and of some of the people who made it happen.  It is the story of Dr. James Murray, a visionary whose life was dedicated to editing the dictionary.  More than that, it is the story of Dr. William Chester Minor.

Dr. Minor was trained at Yale, became a fine physician, and joined the Union army during the Civil War.  By the time the war ended, he was behaving in a very strange manner.  After a brief stay in a mental hospital, he went on tour in Europe, landing in London.  The Army had retired him with a pension.  While there, his monomania manifested itself very publicly when his demons drove him to shoot and kill a complete stranger.

He subsequently was tried and found to be mad.  He was incarcerated at Broadmoor (formerly Bedlam) for almost four decades.  While there, his money and status as a physician bought him favors like a two-room suite, and writing and painting materials.

During his time at Broadmoor, he learned about the O.E.D. and started corresponding with James Murray, and became one of the most prolific researchers and contributors to what was to become the largest publication ever.  He compiled a large library and spent his days researching words and quotes for the dictionary, and his nights piling furniture against his doors to keep demons out of his room, and , in his version of reality, being violated in an unspeakable manner by young girls.

Quite the Victorian schizophrenic.  His preoccupation with sexuality led to further shocking complications in his fractured life, but one thing was clear and true.  His intellect and interst in the dictionary is what makes W.C. Morris a tragic character, and The Professor and the Madman a compelling read.

[Image of Dr. Minor from Vauxhallsociety.org]

But Will He Love Me Like Calvin Loved Alice

That's the question one woman asks herself when she looks at her fiance.  It's a pretty high bar.

I just finished About Alice by Calvin Trillin.  It's a short book. You can read it in an evening or two.  A tribute.  And a memorial.

It's loving, never maudlin. 

Alice was the voice of reason in an otherwise rather madcap household, which prompted one person to write to Trillin that she sounded "like a dietitian in sensible shoes."  In truth, she was as far from that as possible.  Intelligent, no, extremely intelligent, with the courage of her convictions, a sharp sense of humor, great physical beauty and a loving soul.  She was the perfect compliment to Trillin.  He says they were likened to Burns and Allen, except he was Gracie and she was George.

A lifelong non-smoker, she contracted lung cancer in the 1970's when she was in her 30's.  In the early 1990's, she had a recurrence, then in the early 2000's, her heart began to fail her, the effects of the radiation treatments on the muscle taking their toll.  They made the open heart surgery extremely difficult, and her recovery included a long readmission to the hospital.  She was discharged the day of their second daughter's wedding and was able to attend that, a goal she had set for herself. 

Unforunately, the damage to her heart wasn't reversible, and she died waiting for a heart transplant.

She died on 9/11.

Trillin walks a fine line with this book about a woman he clearly adored, and who, maybe with a bit of a wry grin, adored him.  It is warm, sweet and frank, but you never want to cry, for him or her.  Instead, it celebrates their life together and with their daughters (and now he spends his time with their grandchildren, one of whom, when she looks at him, looks just like Alice).

She was too young.  But they had what they had, and that, clearly, was exceptional.

Will he love you like Calvin loved Alice?  Probably not.  It's a high bar.

[image from SearchIndia.com]

Ask Alice

On Thanksgiving, I was cooking and listening to NPR.  It was a great pleasure to listen to Diane Rehm interview a favorite author, Calvin Trillin, about his book about his late wife, Alice.

About Alice is Trillin's memoir about his wife and muse who died in 2001 after more than 35 years of marriage.  In the interview, he was funny, poignant, and very moving.

Alice figures in most of his books, but there is no doubt that even if she wasn't in them, she influenced him and shaded his writing.

She died of lung cancer in 2001. 9/11/2001.

The cancer was diagnosed when she was in her 30's, though she was a life-long non-smoker.  There is a question of whether it was from exposure to second-hand smoke.

She was treated with surgery and radiation therapy, which years later affected her heart.  She was waiting for a heart transplant when she died.

Trillin talks about her beauty, inner and outer, and about his daughters (who also figure prominently in his books), and his four grandchildren, who have allowed him to move on with his life.

*   *   *   *   *

In an aside, they took calls and one of the first was from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.  Hey, I have a friend who lives there.  "Susan in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan".  Wow, I have a good friend names Susan who lives there.  I was totally prepared to here Sue's voice, when another voice came on the air.  I was so disappointed, for a moment, at least.  I guess there's more than one "Susan" in Bloomfield Hills.  Still...

[Image from NPR.org]

The Wisdom of Hunter S. Thompson

Yesterday, I was working with Jack, who is always ready with a pithy quote.

I had commented that someone was pretty weird, and he said "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro...  Hunter S. Thompson."

Jack always remembers quotations, who said them, and jokes, including complex ones, and gets the punchlines right. A lot of them are from Thompson.  Also he does good imitations, not the least of which is Karl Childers, from Sling Blade.

Other deepness from Hunter S.:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

The Edge:  There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

So deep.  I think.

[Image from Barista]

Gate C22

I've just been browsing through The Writer's Almanac.  But after reading a couple dozen poems, the one I wanted to share was still today's offering:

Gate C22   

by Ellen Bass.  From The Human Line.

At Gate C22 in the Portland Airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed.  Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna, in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young.  His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose.  But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again.  We were all watching--
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses.  We couldn't look away.  We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face.  Whe he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as if he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you,  no matter
what happened after--if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

Roman Polanski's Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth is Polanski's violent version of the Shakespeare classic.  Filmed in 1971, three years after the slaying of Sharon Tate by the Manson family, the violence is thought by some to be a purging of Polanski's own rage.

Though it is 36 years old, it is so beautifully filmed and rendered as to be timeless.  Most of the dialog is straight from Shakespeare, yet the action enables the viewer to figure out exactly what is going on.  The costumes are lush and colorful, the action heated.

Macbeth is played by Jon Finch, Lady M by Francesca Annis.  Both are young and beautiful, a departure from how I had envisioned the pair, as middle-aged and slightly graying.  Finch plays the thane perfectly...initially brave and loyal, then seduced by the predictions of the witches.  When the first prediction comes true and he is made Thane of Cawdor, he and his wife conspire to make the rest of the predictions come true as well, as soon as opportunity affords.

The murder of Duncan leads to the assassination of his friend, Banquo, the only man who is likely to figure out Macbeth's guilt, followed by murder of the assassins, and on and on.

Mayhem, war and butchery.  And alongside all this, the growing, increasingly evident, madness of Macbeth and his lady.

I admire Shakespeare tremendously, but that admiration rarely translates into reading or viewing his work.  In this case, I feel virtuous, as if I had read and enjoyed something I had slogged through in high school.